FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

Save Point: Cythura Dreamings

At the Shadow Cybal

"Look, she's painted her tits with glitter! That's so cute!" exclaims Keselt, pointing gratuitously. "Work our way over there and let's find her." The cythuress is dancing and oscillating with a peculiar rhythmic motion, obviously orchestrated based on some internal soundtrack that is being counter-mixed in real time with the actual steel-blade dance music. An attraction to drop-base thrash is a known flaw of the type. She's also obviously stoned on something, eyes dilated into narrow slits, but that's a more socially acceptable sort of habit. The usual cascades of symbols that aren't really there are reflected neon in her glazed eyes, as she reviews the code of the world around her and finds it amusing in the light of practical and applied neurochemistry.

The cythuress has full sensory videos running on loop in her personal thoughtspace, random selections from a pool. As a demonstration of her skills, one on the left shows Sethkill licking out a cute little whore he met several years ago, and one on the right shows Keselt doing indecent things to herself with an ice-cold bottle of green wine after an especially awesome party. The view is watermarked with the logo, 'Beautiful Bitches Do Badness!' so Keselt feels complimented. Central pride of place is however given to a beautiful naked sethuress, covered in gold and black paint, splendid nipples pronounced as she flings herself arms wide against the walls, throws herself to the floor and pleasures the cold slate with her sensuous haunches. The cythuress is probably some sort of darkly intellectual lesbian, given her approach to life, but that doesn't seem to be the motivation behind her choice of artwork. "Well, that's a very recognizable sethuress," observes Keselt. "Even if Sethkill doesn't like to do it whilst watching one of her adventures." "My father got my half-brother on her during a long weekend, and she got the whole thing on wide-angle capture," points out Sethkill, resignedly. "So you'll forgive me for not being a Kailey Fenris fan. Sure, she turns me on just fine, but there's something disturbing about it when you're sort of related to the star." "Personally, I liked the dildo scene in 'Innosedura' the best," interrupts the cythuress. "But that's really beside the point. The topic of Kailey Fenris gives you a whole access point to hack into the life and times of your rather worrying brother, one that you yourself have never really considered because of your personal aversions to it. In my opinion, you'd do nothing better than to download a copy and do your ayr Keselt slowly and lovingly whilst watching it. It would help you free your mind. But as I said, that's beside the point." Sethkill says nothing, but Keselt is interested. "You sound more like a psychologist than some amoralist hacker," she observes. "Social engineering was a sideline of mine back in the day, but I broadened my interests to include machine psychology and applied dildonics," the cythuress replies cheerfully. "Of course, the real reason individuals such as myself still exist is due to our underlying philosophy regarding the essential freedom of information. To free ones mind, it is necessary to understand it. All these things you already know about us, so there is no risk in telling them to you." Keselt and the cythuress, whose name is Phr^sk, get into an extended conversation regarding Keselts world-class understanding of theoretical xeno-sociology, and the origins of Phr^sks weird hacker socio-philosophy in virtual environments. Phr^sk tries to convert Keselt, and Keselt allows herself to be teased toward it, on the basis that it is entirely theoretical. The two of them seem to be having enormous fun engaging in what is essentially just short of a complete mindfuck. Sethkill can only hope that this prompts Phr^sk to keep her prices down, because she is charging by the subjective minute and Keselt is proving to be one hell of an intellectual distraction. Still, the ability of cythura to multi-task is legendary, and it is not impossible that Phr^sk is running several completely separate strands of herself in addition to the one they are talking to, to be reconciled later afterwards. Occasional questions regarding what Sethkill already knows about the sort of things he's looking for would seem to argue that this is in fact the case. Much to his surprise, Sethkill finds that he is quite happy in Phr^sks peculiar company, watching Kailey Fenris do her thing with no particular discomfiture, and enjoying the tone of the conversation. Normally he and Keselt try to keep their respective and mutually exclusive fields of expertise from becoming too entangled, by keeping them out of their home lives as much as possible, but this means that all too often they don't have the chance to talk about things. Phr^sk can not only keep up, she can defend her point, and Keselt seems to be enjoying herself. Phr^sks skills are quite as legendary as people claim, and she seems to regard security measures of every kind as an inconvenient detail. A summary list of her open connections at any given time could be considered a crime in and of itself. She seems to especially like things that have been erased, probably because objects that are no longer extant have no security on them. When Sethkill asks if she could manage a drink, for example, she magics up a bottle of the exact same wine that Keselt was stimulating herself with in the video clip, as well as an entire suite of retroactive furniture based around a wide basket chair of the sort you sink down into. The whole thing is so breathtakingly instant that it completely conceals the difficulties involved. Sethkill blinks, then sinks down into the chair and licks the seal of the bottle of wine so it opens itself. The whole peculiar event has taken on the tones of some sort of bizarre house party. He grins at Keselt and she grins back. "Behold my eliteness," declares Phr^sk proudly. After about an hour, Phr^sk pauses and checks a few things, then declares herself successful. "What I have set up for you is a sort of self-referential search process that uses what you know to deduce where to look for the things you don't know yet, but would want to know if you knew about them," she explains. "It especially flags suspicious absences, then looks for the bits that are missing. Best of all, it auto-speculates as to motivation, which then generates further leads as to where to search for more things that aren't there." "I think I heard something about that sort of thing once," notes Keselt. "Something about using it to justify a bunch of weird conspiracy theories." "Oh, it was written by a bunch of weird conspiracy theorists so they wouldn't have to do their own research," explains Phr^sk. "It's a lot easier to come up with a good conspiracy when you can locate any number of conveniently absent documents, missing witnesses and meaningless connections between things, without actually doing any work. Of course, the whole thing is circular because it supports whatever assumptions you put into it in the first place. My version is better because it also does retroactive fact-checking against its assumptions." "Didn't something happen to the conspiracy theorists in question?" adds Keselt suspiciously, having just remembered further details. "They disappeared under suspicious circumstances," declares Phr^sk with cheerful malice. "The fact that I managed to acquire their software suggests they found exactly what they were looking for. Well, you get the idea." Keselt and Phr^sk spend another half hour chatting about urban legends and bad conspiracy theories, whilst Sethkill downs imaginary wine and finds himself oddly charmed by Kailey Fenris, despite having met her in person. Possibly Phr^sk is spinning things out to match the length of the entire movie, because it has just reached the bit with the slate tiles again when they wrap up the conversation and get the politesse over with. Despite Phr^sks mysterious motivations, her fee is no more unreasonable than expected. Sethkill is becoming slightly short on cash, due to all too many adventures and holidays with hidden agendas, but he can live with that. It's worth it just to watch Keselt talk to her. Payment is achieved by a transaction in which Sethkill makes purchase of a real world bulk commodity of known value, ownership of which is then transferred to Phr^sk by means of a physical receipt. The resulting arrangement is fully traceable but involves no actual data access, which is essential given their respective positions. In exchange, Sethkill is handed by Phr^sk a data packet, which manifests itself in the weave as a calculatedly archaic optical disk, made out of a thick slice of solid crystal and held in a partially transparent polished brass casing with a stylised eye symbol engraved onto it. The packet is in fact a link, and can be read from but not transcribed. As an act of good faith, Phr^sk allows him to view the initial results before completing the transaction. "The longer it runs, the more it will reveal. It borrows time on the various systems it accesses to continue to run independently, but the more extensive the search becomes, the greater the likelihood that someone will notice it. It can be deleted completely, but only if someone targets it specifically. Check it at regular intervals in case it finds something new, or gets erased." Keselt and Phr^sk also exchange various addresses and numbers quite independently of the main transaction, apparently in case they should want to get in contact with one another later. Sethkill assumes that real world meetings are entirely possible, since Phr^sk has a completely legitimate real world identity, separate to her various online persona. Finding her has, after all, proven to be more about getting her to reveal her real self, than anything else. Phr^sk has apparently been around a very long time, and knows how to separate her different selves. Around them, the thoughtspace starts to dissolve gracefully, erasing itself to reveal the sex club once again around them, which of course they never actually left. The real Phr^sk is still dancing to her own remixed soundtrack, apparently never having stopped. Sethkill cannot help but admire the elegant plausibility of the transition.

Phr^sk catches Sethkill checking out her beautiful gold dust coated nipples, comparing them to those of Kailey Fenris, and smiles slyly at him.